Thomas Hardy Quotes
Like the British Constitution, she (Britain) owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928, English Writer, The Hand of Ethelberta, 1876
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See {632309} for an similar French Political expression made at approximately the same time over an important principle. However, commerce in its many forms such as business and job creation has been the major reason for compromising important moral and political principles during much of recorded history.
The issues of check and balances in the American constitution were radical by world standards of the day. However, it was by no means an new concept and as this quotation illustrates was discussed and debated in England, but although England was far ahead of almost all other countries with respect to eliminating absolute power, they never took it as far as the Americans did. That took a revolution.
Without Dirksen’s support, LBJ could not have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending legal segregation. However, the conservative wing of the Republican Party had strongly opposed the idea of the Federal Government using its power to control and regulate issues that involved local practice and custom and trampled on states’ rights. Dirksen, who personally was not a racist like many conservatives were at the time, faced the dilemma and came down on the side of ending legal discrimination even if it meant violating the principle of limited federal government. When asked about his seeming inconsistency (which was often), this was his brilliant response. Producing one of the best political quotations of all time.
Thomas Jefferson used this quotation on several occasions.
In modern times almost all countries have written constitutions. And almost all of those constitutions appear to be democratic. Many have been taken from the United States Constitution. However, most of the countries are not real democracies as they do not enforce their own constitutions. For example, in Egypt, the constitution guarantees women equal rights to men. There are many female attorneys. However, the notion of a female judge is too much for the sexist culture. So regardless of what the constitution says, it is not enforced with respect to female judges. When Smyth gave his lecture, constitutions were just getting popular. He was prescient enough to realize that a constitution to be effective must conform to the belief structure of most of the population and the constitution most be administered as well as written.
Thomas Hardy OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.
